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When You Don’t Know, Vote No: McGoldrick’s Prop K

It is ironic that Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, elected as an advocate of sunshine (the issues of citizen access and participation in local government) and neighborhoods, has decided to hurt San Francisco’s neighborhood newspapers without one bit of sunshine.

At 13 minutes to deadline on Aug. 7, a Board of Supervisors minority of Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano, Aaron Peskin, Matt Gonzalez and McGoldrick qualified Proposition K on the ballot without a single hearing. In effect, it would suppress the citizen’s right to know in advance what they are up to at City Hall through public notice.

However, facing mounting opposition and stumbling to jump-start his campaign, McGoldrick tried last week to withdraw Proposition K in last-ditch negotiations. The supervisor postponed a London vacation for two days in a last-minute attempt to ask colleagues to withdraw the measure with help from the city attorney and Independent publisher James Fang. However, under political pressure, McGoldrick waffled and kept Proposition K — that deliberately targets a Fang family publication according to his own press release — on the ballot.

Affirming that viewpoint, the nonpartisan S.F. Planning and Urban Research association voted overwhelmingly against Proposition K on Aug. 21. Critical even of the current bidding process, SPUR labeled Proposition K as a “chilling attack on the First Amendment and the concept of a free press.” The think tank said, “The manner by which Prop K was introduced brings up broad constitutional questions. [SPUR] believes that Prop K is so motivated by the politics of trying to shut down a critical voice that … cannot be ignored.”

The measure follows a trend by the supervisors to rely more on the Internet at the expense of the right to know among the poor, seniors and communities of color redlined by the digital divide. Though San Francisco is the most wired city on the Internet, many residents cannot access the business of the board via computer and must rely on public notice in the classified sections of free community newspapers like the Independent, S.F. Bayview and Bay Area Reporter to learn about budget deliberations, new rent control laws, proposed increases in business and property taxes.

Proposition K would undo the reforms of a 1994 measure, then called Proposition J, that qualified in the sunshine of over 15,000 voters. That year, the supervisors, strong-armed by publisher William R. Hearst III, allowed the daily and non-daily public notices contracts to be respectively monopolized by jointly-operated Chronicle and Hearst-owned Examiner dailies.

Specifically, the supervisors gave the non-consecutive daily notice contract to the higher bid of the Examiner — thereby rejecting the Independent. Offering little bang for the buck, the Examiner had a circulation that was almost four times less than the Independent (87,000 versus 326,000), offered at a higher subscription price (a half dollar versus the free Independent), and was based in New York (the Independent is printed and published in S.F.). At the same time, African American leaders criticized Hearst for redlining with the Examiner. The 1994 political shenanigans led to a lawsuit and a citizen’s initiative.

The Independent sued — the third suit in seven years — Hearst and the S.F. Newspaper Agency for a predatory pricing attempt to drive the Independent out of business. The Independent won a $1.6 million judgment, which was settled in the 2000 transfer of the Examiner to the owners of the Independent.

Meanwhile, a ballot initiative passed in November 1994. Proposition J ended the whims of a bidding process with an objective point system for the purchaser and supervisors to evaluate bids for the non-consecutive daily contract. Points would be allocated for bid price, total circulation (a minimum circulation of 50,000 published three times weekly), subscription price, and whether the newspaper was a locally-owned, minority-owned or women-owned enterprise.

Redlining accusations were ended through “outreach newspapers” that advertised public notices in lesbian/gay/bisexual, Latino, Chinese and African American communities. Later the supervisors added Japanese, Southeast Asian and Russian communities.

Despite Supervisor McGoldrick’s allegations that the cost of public notices have increased since 1994, the Independent’s bid for the non-consecutive daily public notices contract from 1994 to 2002 has gone from an estimated rate of $2.70 per line of public notice advertising to $3.78 per line. That rate represents, in eight years, an average of 5 percent per year — slightly above inflation. Meanwhile, the profligate-spending supervisors have let the city budget double in a period of five years to $4.9 billion. At the same time, major political voices have resoundingly rejected McGoldrick’s arguments.

The progressive leaning Democratic Party overwhelmingly rejected the measure, passionately led by former S.F. League of Women Voters President Holli Thier and joined by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and former Supervisors Sue Bierman and Leslie Katz because of its potential impact on women-owned businesses.

During the Democratic Party interviews, a speaker against Proposition K labeled the measure as a local version of Proposition 209 — the 1996 state measure that eliminated affirmative action in state government.

Joining the opposition, the S.F. Republican Party saw Prop K as an attempt to silence alternative moderate voices in favor of the Bay Guardian, a non-union progressive tabloid not printed in San Francisco.

[Note: This columnist and SPUR board member spoke out against Proposition K but abstained from the vote. Before starting a writing career, the columnist had worked on the original 1994 Prop J campaign.]

SPAM FOR SAM: Reach Samson Wong at samson@sfindependent.com.